V. I. Lenin

Communication on the Wireless Negotiations

with Béla Kun

Recorded:End of March 1919;First Published:Published according to the gramophone records; Organization of these speeches was accomplished byTsentropechatthe central agency of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee for the Supply and Distribution of Periodicals between 1919 and 1921. 13 of Lenin’s speeches were recorded.Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 	4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 242-243Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & 	Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive 	(www.marx.org) 2002; Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

I knew Comrade Béla Kun very well when he was
    still a prisoner of war in Russia; and he visited me many times to
    discuss communism and the communist revolution. Therefore, when
    news of the Hungarian communist revolution was received, and in a
    communication signed by Comrade Béla Kun at that, we wanted
    to speak to him and ascertain exactly how the revolution
    stood. The first communication we received about it gave us some
    grounds for fearing that, perhaps, the so-called socialists,
    traitor-socialists, had resorted to some deception, had got round
    the Communists, the more so that the latter were in prison. And
    so, the day after the first communication about the Hungarian
    revolution was received, I sent a wireless message to Budapest,
    asking Béla Kun to come to the apparatus, and I put a number
    of questions to him of such a nature as to enable me to make sure
    that it was really he who was speaking. I asked him what real
    guarantees there were for the character of the government and for
    its actual policy. Comrade Béla Kun’s reply was quite
    satisfactory and dispelled all our doubts. It appears that the
    Left Socialists had visited Béla Kun in prison to consult him
    about forming a government. And it was only these Left Socialists,
    who sympathised with the Communists, and also people from the
    Centre who formed the new government, while the Right Socialists,
    the traitorsocialists, the irreconcilables and incorrigibles, so
    to speak, left the Party, and not a single worker followed
    them. Later communications showed that the policy of the Hungarian
    Government was most firm and so Communist in trend “that
  while we began with workers” control of industry and
    only gradually began to socialise industry, Béla Kun, with
    his prestige, his conviction that he was backed by vast masses,
    could at once pass a law which converted all the industrial
    undertakings in Hungary that were run on capitalist lines into
    public property. Two days later we became fully convinced that the
    Hungarian revolution had at once, with extraordinary rapidity,
    taken the communist road. The bourgeoisie voluntarily surrendered
    power to the Communists of Hungary. The bourgeoisie demonstrated
    to the whole world that when a grave crisis supervenes, when the
    nation is in danger, the bourgeoisie is unable to govern. And
    there is only one government that is really a popular government,
    a government that is really beloved of the people-the government
    of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and
    Peasants’ Deputies.

Long live Soviet power in Hungary!